With BlackBerry service resumed, RIM focused on winning back users

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion announced this morning that service levels are returning to normal after the failure of a core switch within RIM's infrastructure rendered its smartphones useless to users from Africa to Latin America.

"We've let many of you down. But let me assure you that we're working around the clock to fix this," a tired-looking co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in a video update on the BlackBerry site Oct. 13.

During a conference call later in the morning, Lazaridis, with co-CEO Jim Balsillie, again apologized to BlackBerry customers for the service failure and announced RIM's new priority was winning back its users' trust.

When asked why the video apology was so late to arrive, Lazaridis explained that he was very much involved in the management of the efforts to restore the service. The executive added, much as his appearance in the video suggested, that "no one at RIM has been going home."

Regarding compensation, RIM does has service-level agreements (SLAs) with some customers, though others, it seems, will need to make do with just RIM's heartfelt apologies — whether that will be enough remains to be seen (CP: RIM, with BlackBerry outages spreading, hasn't seen the worst of it).

As for compensation to carrier partners, Lazaridis said in he'd been in touch with the heads of global carriers, and their response had been one of support, not compensation. Though of course tomorrow is another day.

Analyst Jack Gold, with J. Gold Associates, was sympathetic to RIM's plight, writing in a research note that RIM's service record has been in the neighborhood of 99.97% and that everything from SMS systems to Gmail and iTunes have had glitches on occasion. Even the delay in solving the problem is understandable, he suggested.

"Most systems like this are computer modeled in great detail before being installed to try and find any potential problems," Gold wrote. "In all likelihood the failure mechanism involved was not part of any modeling, and so it was hard to find. That is probably why it took them some time to determine what was going on."

Gold continued:

We need to look at this rationally, and understand that all of these systems are so complex, it’s highly likely there will be failures. In fact, it’s surprising there are as few failures in these massively complex systems as there are. So while I too lost service, I am inclined to cut RIM a bit of slack here, as it seems they were not the ones at fault (sounds like they have some real work to do with their infrastructure vendors who sold them a redundant switch that apparently wasn’t).

The press has been quick to note the particularly bad luck of RIM's system failing the week Apple's newest iPhone became available for pre-order. The iPhone, along with high-end Android smartphones, have steadily been stealing market share from RIM, which has been (not quite effectively or efficiently) scrambling to hold onto enterprise customers, woo younger consumers and draw developers to its platform.

Gold told Connected Planet that he doesn't expect the outage to deter developers considering the platform, which stands to gain from the upcoming compatibility of QNX — its tablet platform, slated to eventually extend to its smartphones — with Android.

"Developers clearly go where the volumes are to maximize market opportunity," said Gold. "Having said that, I also believe that the Android player will help attract developers that BlackBerry may not have had previously who are currently developing for Android. The bottom line is, as a developer: show me the money."